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Last Day of Twenty-One

It’s a glorious day to be twenty-one. Winds are high, the air is sharp with cool, and Friday seems to have shaken itself out over campus, draping everyone in bright cheeks and worn-in jeans.

Tonight will contain the last few episodes of Game of Thrones (season one), perhaps striding the streets of Morris, grinning under flickering lamps, and pausing at the Met Lounge to see friends who have come into town for the weekend.

Tomorrow, unbelievably, I’ll be twenty-two by the time I wake up. There is a promising pile of packages sitting by my bed; I will attack those first. And then I’ll likely draw up my knees and think about the enormity of being twenty-two. It’ll feel enormous, I suppose, because I remember being eight, and fourteen, and (heaven forbid) sixteen. I remember all those years and yet somehow now they’re all lodged inside me like little bundles I only draw out for nostalgia’s sake. And I’ll be forced, beginning tomorrow, to trudge forward into the age that means the end of school, at least for a while. That means leaving my friends and my professors and all the wonders of college.

After a few minutes, I expect I’ll shake my head and begin getting ready. There’s a parade tomorrow morning. It’s not in my honor, but I’m pretending it is; I’m marching in it in support of a local DFL candidate. I don’t know said candidate, but I’ve been bribed with a free t-shirt. That’s really all it takes to make me happy.

Tomorrow night is the enormous birthday gathering I’ve planned for myself. It seems sort of vain to throw a party for oneself, but as I haven’t had a ‘friends’ party since I was eight, and as it’s my last chance to throw one with my UMM friends, I’m going for it. I tried to think of a theme: something about the Beatles, perhaps, or something literary. But then I decided that the important thing is to have all of my friends under one roof. And to have a potluck so that said friends can eat and be merry.